I am tired. Physically and mentally.
The last two months of my life have been a whirlwind of activity and emotion.
Today, I am coming out the other side.
I have a hope that I haven’t felt in a while. My parents are coming for a couple of months. There is a promise of more help at work. I am feeling that I am where I need to be.
With that, I am also feeling ready to tackle a topic that I have been avoiding for a few weeks now.
On Mother’s day, I met my sister for the first time. A sister that two years ago, I didn’t even know existed.
For a couple weeks after the meeting, people asked me what it was like, and all I could say was “WEIRD.”
It is tough to explain to people how mind-blowing it is to meet someone for the first time and hear that you sound the same. Or that you have the same hair. Or that you look alike. And then realize that you both never liked how your nose looked.
You see, as an adopted person, you never see people in your family that look like you. No matter how much other people try to exclaim that you look like your parents. Because, you know. You don’t look in the mirror each day and see your mother. There is no family resemblance. And in my adopted family, there is so much family resemblance. I can look at my uncle and my two male cousins and see so much family resemblance that in some baby pictures, you can’t tell who is who. But that doesn’t happen with me. I can clearly tell me apart from my cousins, even as babies.
Over my years growing up, I just never gave it much thought. But as an adult, I would hear from people that they had seen someone that looked just like me at some point and I would think about how there might be someone out there who looked like me. I just never pursued it. I don’t know that it really mattered to me until I hit my 40’s. I changed a lot after I turned 40, and a deep-seated piece of me began to just really want to see pictures of people who looked like me. It wasn’t the reason I started my search, but it sure was a hope of an outcome from the search.
So when my sister suggested we bring some pictures with us to the meeting, I had to scramble a little bit and find some that were me over time. And for some reason, it didn’t occur to me that I would be seeing bunches of people who looked like me.
But when those pictures got laid out on the table, it was like I was transported to another world. Here were baby pictures of my brother (who I still haven’t met) and if you put them next to mine, you could barely tell the two apart. And my sister kept saying that I looked like her mom or her aunt during certain times of my life. And I saw her, with my crazy hair. We were definitely related, and those pictures were proof. We all looked alike.
The conversation lasted at least three hours. We walked down memory lane for both of us and talked about growing up. We looked at pictures and talked about the people in our lives. It was a good meeting.
I am pretty sure she felt that way too. And I hope someday to meet and connect with my brother as well.
But we haven’t really spoken since, because I needed time to process everything. Other things were happening around this time that were messing with me emotionally, and I just needed time to be within myself before I could get it out into the world.
I reached out again yesterday, and I am hoping we can build a relationship over time that two sisters might have had growing up. I know that I have always liked the idea of having a sister and sometimes envied those who did have sisters, so now I will work on making some of that a reality.
I know that I have struggled with making friends in the past, but I am going to try hard to cultivate this sisterhood of ours. I want to be friends.
The year of Discovery has been a big one for me, and we are only halfway through it. Where else will this intention take me?
🙂